


He’s in Room 309

by tafih



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (2015), The Defenders (Marvel TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teachers, F/M, Gen, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-23
Updated: 2019-02-23
Packaged: 2019-11-04 08:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17895194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tafih/pseuds/tafih
Summary: The office of Ms. Dinah Madani, Social Studies teacher at the Marvel Collegiate School for Enhanced Individuals, is Room 309.If you need to find her, she’ll be there. She’s always there.Unfortunately, for her, Mr. Frank Castle, is also always in Room 309.So one begins to wonder why.





	He’s in Room 309

The office of Ms. Dinah Madani, Social Studies teacher at Marvel Collegiate School for Enhanced Individuals, is Room 309.

If you need to find her, she’ll be there. She’s always there.

Unfortunately, for her, Mr. Frank Castle, is also _always_ in Room 309.

“Why?” she groans, as her life force drained from her as her head crouched over the shoddily-written pile of essays on the Iranian Revolution. (In fact, two percent of her life-force had completely dissipated at the sight of “Iraq” being used interchangeably with “Iran” in a paper by Jonathan Thompson, a sophomore from her second period).

“Why what?” Frank asks back as he stuffed the last bits of his club sandwich into his face. He sits on one of the student desks. One boot is planted firmly on the attached seat and the other dangles right above the linoleum floor. He has made himself quite comfortable.  

“Why are you _always_ in here?”

While Castle is another Social Studies teacher, and they occasionally get drinks Friday nights, Madani still could not see why Castle would eat his lunch in _her office._ They had a tenuous friendship at best and were not even in the same cohort (She’s Cohort C; he’s Cohort B). His office is on the first floor on the opposite side of the building. Sure, they had department meetings, but those were every other Monday.

He even had a small slow-cooker in his office.

He has no reason to be here.

“Why?” she asks again.

“You have a free period during my lunch,” he grumbles. “What’s the big deal?” A shrug passes across his shoulders.

“That is not justification for **_why_** you spend your lunch **_here_** ,” Dinah mumbled through her fatigue as she wrote a 14/20 on the top of an essay and a ‘ _Iran and Iraq are different countries, Jon’_ in red ink.

He shrugs again.

Then a name crosses her mind.

_Billy._

Her soul aches a bit when she thinks of him. Definitely not as much as before. It’s been ten months since she’s last seen him strapped to a hospital bed and the sharp pain of it has dissipated into a dull sting. But it still comes.

God, he sucked.

He was cruel, manipulative, and veritably insane by the end of it all. She had given him her trust, affection, her damn weekends - and he returned it all with violence.

Frank had set them up together.

He probably feels guilty.

Dinah sighs, “You don’t need to.”

“What?” Frank tosses a Lay’s potato chip into his mouth and crunches loudly.

“About Billy,” she clarified. “You don’t need to feel guilty.”

He stops chewing.

His whole body tenses at the shoulders. “It’s-”

“It’s really alright,” she insists in her typical curt manner. But she hopes her sincerity is getting across. “I don’t blame you. I blame myself.”

There’s a beat.

“That’s what I don’t like,” is his response, in his raspy, gravel voice.

Dinah smirks. His voice, face, arms covered with tattoos all scream roughness and force, but his person is so full of gentle softness.

Her friend is nothing but a master of opposites.

“I’m over it, all the same,” she provides with level monotony. “ _Really._ ”

His gaze twitches away as he digests her answer (and his lunch).

“Frank?” she prods. “I really am. You don’t need to check in on me. It’s been nearly a year anyway.”

“Yeah, well…”

Then, a knock sounds from the door and both of them turn to see a flash of blonde peek in as the door creaks open. “Hey, Dinah,” chirps Karen Page, one of the English teachers of Cohort C. “Sorry but Trish wants to go over stuff for the debate competition so-Oh, hey, Frank,” she says, her voice piquing when she catches his figure. A large smile develops on her face. “How are you?”

“I’m good,” he says with a nod. “You?”

She grins back as she leans on the hunter green door frame. “As well as I can be,” she gives then returns her attention to Dinah, “Raincheck on lunch?”

Dinah nods, but absently, as her focus has been in the subtle little twitches of Frank’s lips.

Karen says her thanks and returns out to the abyss of the hallway with promises of going out for a girls night one day.

The door shuts with a loud clack.

Another beat.

Then Dinah starts laughing. Laughing and laughing, like a drunk college girl who discovered the ennui of life in the bathroom of a suburban home.

Then she stops.

Looks up at him.

Says, point blank, “You ass.”

**Author's Note:**

> It’s been a joy rewatching some older movies and finding Jon Bernthal in them. He blends so well into his characters despite retaining some of his physical ticks. But unlike other actors, he disappears into those roles and it’s fascinating to watch.  
> One of these roles is Mr. McCarthy from "Me, Earl and the Dying Girl" - watched it on the plane, bawled the whole time through, goodness. Anyways, thought it was interesting how Bernthal’s character always left to go to a "Room 309" and I played around with the idea.  
> I know there are a lot of Teacher/professor AUs so I wanted to concentrate on one little moment.  
> Hope you liked it! I might continue this but we’ll see :)


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